With the recent explosion of new communication options, including email, instant messaging, and cellular telephony, a greater need exists for ways to manage the myriad of communications that a person receives each day. Unfortunately, unsolicited commercial solicitations, often referred to as “spam,” make communication management difficult.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other businesses lose millions of dollars and countless hours of lost productivity as a result of unsolicited commercial email. Spam clogs the Internet, computer systems, and email accounts, slowing down operations and, at times, causing system shutdowns and failures. Expenses include the cost of new computer hardware to handle the increased flow of email created by spam, filtering software to cut down the flow of spam, and staff time spent identifying and deleting junk email.
Spam also hurts consumers. Many people still pay hourly rates for Internet access, including those who use wireless Internet services and business travelers who download email while on the road. These consumers have to pay for the time they spend downloading these unsolicited messages to their computer from the Internet.
Most ISPs also limit the space available in account mailboxes for consumers to store email messages. Spam fills mailbox space that consumers could utilize for other purposes. It also becomes inconvenient to sort through when an individual is checking for personal messages in an email account.
The content of spam is also a troublesome issue. While some spam messages are from legitimate businesses, a majority of these emails are promoting various scams and schemes or sexually oriented Web sites. Many people become victims of the “get rich quick” schemes in these emails. In other situations, pornographic images and messages end up in the mailboxes of unsuspecting families with children.
Current technical solutions are generally regarded as inadequate to stop the flow of spam and other unsolicited communications. Most technical solutions attempt to find a balance between spam elimination and reducing false positives (i.e. removal of legitimate messages). However, no prior solution is perfect. Aggressive spam-elimination systems result in too many false positives, while more conservative systems fail to block a large number of spam messages.
Of course, unsolicited communications are not limited to the Internet. Many people still receive unsolicited telephone calls and facsimiles, despite tougher legislation and state and national do-not-call lists.
A further problem is found in the great quantities of desirable communication that is received. Even though much communication is desired, excessive communication can lead to “information overload.” One effect of this problem is an inordinate amount of time that it takes to sort through and process the desirable communication. Mechanisms are needed for more effectively managing all types of communication that is received, both desirable and undesirable communication.